


frayed and fringed

by dirtyicicles



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: M/M, Not Your Happy Ending, Past Infidelity, angsty drabble, clone theory sheith
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-24
Updated: 2017-10-24
Packaged: 2019-01-22 07:32:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,175
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12476512
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dirtyicicles/pseuds/dirtyicicles
Summary: “Why couldn't you see it, Keith?” Shiro asked, the moment sliding against their skin like molten lava. “Why didn't you know?"





	frayed and fringed

**Author's Note:**

> AKA I remembered a show I had watched back in the day that still fucks me up to this one. So I remembered, and decided to write a little drabble exercise thing about it. This...this is just sad. No happy endings. Yet. I might feel compelled to write something to accompany it later. (Feel free to let me know if you want to! God knows I made it sad enough.) 
> 
> Either way, just a short, kind of nonsensical thing. After season four, I'd say. I needed to write some feelings either way.

Operation “Kuron” had been a success. 

A stealth mission buried underneath layers of falsehood and lies, an open wound bleeding into the heart of Voltron. Their evergreen had been forcefully bent towards the winds of fate, snapped in half and gouging out the heart of nothing and more, and everything and none. 

And Keith's dagger had been the one to end it. 

“Shiro” had snapped. He'd come at Keith like a monster, worse than a monster, yellow eyes glazed like stained glass, his voice ripped from his throat in a demonic howl that whipped colder than the winds in the alps. Keith's dagger had buried itself into flesh and muscle, past a beating heart that used to bleed for him. 

Keith had been forced to stare into those eyes as he watched them go lifeless, watch them turn monotone, and he watched “Shiro” smile—and god, he'd really had the nerve to _smile_ —and offer him final words of gratitude.

_Thank you._

Keith had reeled. 

Keith had screamed, he yelled, washing the blood from his hands in the rains of that silent planet, and he'd tilted his head back and cried some more. But nothing compared to the feeling Keith found himself with when his actual Shiro, a rogue gone missing, a rogue come back from the dead, came back to him a second time. They'd buried Shiro and he had found his way back, clawed up from the grave and walked past cheap coalition posters that plastered an imposer everywhere, back to a Lion that finally responded without the moment's hesitation.

Shiro had come back, some months after Shiro had died. But that hadn't been Shiro, had it? That had been what they called Kuron, back in galran headquarters. 

Keith had learned of the plan after he'd infiltrated a base. In a fit of melancholic sleeplessness, he'd joined his blades in a mission that would guarantee him the information he restlessly sought. It came to him surprisingly easy. 

A druid's mask cracked underneath his boot, and its voice whispered to him in a tongue he wasn't sure he understood, but with words he recognized all the same. Throwing whatever he had left within himself to the wind, he'd tried the words in a password that granted him entry at the lonely terminal where Kuron had been kept, before Kuron had found his way to them. 

A clone. 

A clone that had been allowed to escape, an experiment to see how close something digital and synthetic could get to team Voltron. 

Keith's stomach turned. 

_The memories of the test subject have been artificially implanted into neurons to resemble a habit. While replicating a memory is impossible, there will be a primal urge triggered when conditions are right, an instinct to act upon to help subject KURON blend into its surroundings._

It. 

Clone. 

Subject. 

Experiment. 

Test. 

Keith bit his tongue until metallic crimson washed over it. 

_You fell in love with a replica. It wasn't yours. It wasn't him. It was never meant to be yours. It was a wounded animal that needed to be put to the stake. You needed to kill it, not fuck it._

He breathed hard, deep and ragged, shaking hands just barely keeping him upright at the terminal. Pidge's translations worked well; too well. There were pages and pages of digital contracts, detailed steps on how they'd molded a near-perfect human being. Predictions, outliers, demands, commands. 

Kuron was supposed to play his charade longer than this. His snap, his feeble wiring in his Galra-Playing-God brain burned, and he'd died. He'd died, melting into a mess of puddled flesh and tender pink that had bared itself to Keith on his blade. 

He'd died thinking he was Shiro. 

Keith punched the terminal. 

It shattered around his clenched fist, the glass digging into his gloved knuckles. He cursed, picking the bloodied pieces out one by one. One by one, each piece replayed the moment he dragged his faltering knife from Shiro's chest. One by one, and over and over again, he relived Shiro's death in his arms. 

Except that wasn't Shiro. It was Kuron. And Kuron had no soul, and he had no life, and he had no otherworldly intentions ingrained into his one-track mind to give him purpose in this life or the next. He was a test meant to die, a being made to kill. 

He was supposed to kill Keith. 

He was supposed to kill all of them.

Keith's fingers brushed over his neck, where he could still smell the burning flesh and formaldehyde. He swallowed thickly around the growing lump in his throat. It still hurt. Everything still hurt. 

Keith sank to his knees, thumping the side of his fist to the floor. Over and over again, until he swore he heard a bone crack, felt the sharp sting of something _misplaced_ shoot up his arm and into his shoulder. 

He beat the floor into a submission he wanted to beat into himself. 

He shouldn't have been so naive. He shouldn't have been so desperate. He should have known better. 

When Shiro came back, it was insult to injury. It was concern mixed with guilt. Keith had lost track of how many times he'd been sick in Shiro's presence. 

The others had to explain what had happened in his stead. Keith always faltered, balked underneath a crushing weight of his dishonesty, his loyalty misplaced, without question, elsewhere. 

Allura spent the next two evenings explaining everything. The paladins were there, comparing how Shiro looked to Kuron; they were the same, save for the hair. Kuron had gotten everything right, except for the hair. 

Shiro had come to them with the same long style Kuron had sported, cut short once he was able to. Keith had watched him buzz his own head. Shiro had cut his hair like it was second nature, like he'd always done it. Because fuck, he always had. Keith remembered Shiro's mild disdain for the barber. 

Shiro was back, in either case. Shiro was back and the team returned to tensed, balanced normalcy. Shiro had to get used to the changes, had to get used to being _Shiro_ again, but it was happening. 

Slowly but steadily, it was happening again.

-

“You know you don't have to keep it all in.” 

Shiro's voice was soft, steadier than Kuron's. It was the first change Keith had noticed. 

“I know.” 

He didn't turn to look at Shiro. He pawed through his reports instead, eyes glued to the holocaster before him. Mundane words of alien lettering flashed in front of his eyes, all words he'd been rereading for the past fifteen minutes now. The others had left Keith alone in the room with the one thing he'd been secretly trying to avoid for weeks, now. 

“You know it's all right. You know I don't hold anything against you.”

That was a damn lie. 

Shiro wouldn't touch Keith, and Keith wouldn't touch Shiro. It was mutual, and at this point, they were both beating around a bush, avoiding each other and the problems that weighed down on their shoulders like a mauling bear. The others had noticed it, and the others opted to leave them alone. This was their problem to sort out. 

This was a problem Keith was too scared to sort out. 

“I...don't know what to say, at this point.” He swallowed hard. “Everything's out on the table.” 

Shiro went quiet. His mere presence felt different from Kuron's, and Keith wished he could beat himself black and blue. How could he have been so _dumb._

“I said it was all right-” 

“It's _not_ all right, Shiro!” 

Keith turned, quick to the point and short with the fuse. His chest was already heaving, and he forced a deep breath, a failed attempt to calm himself. “It's not all right, Shiro. You know it. Stop pretending like it is.” 

Silence dropped like a pin, and Keith turned around again. He didn't meet Shiro's eyes when he'd initially moved, and he felt them on him the entire time. Boring into the back of his skull, silent, thinking. 

“You're right.” 

Shiro sighed, dropping his own tablet to the table. “You're right, Keith. We need to talk.” 

“No, we don't,” he started, throwing the words over his shoulder. “We don't. I fucked up, Shiro. I'm sorry.” 

“I know you are.” Shiro's voice no longer carried the residual sweetness that reminded Keith of the jam on his morning muffins. Shiro dropped the old lover's demeanor, the one he used to carry in the humid mornings of their time back in the garrison, when they would both be sweaty and half naked, sitting on the floor of their old shack and getting ready for their day. 

Shiro stood his full height instead, and there was a war in his eyes that told Keith he wanted to snap. Keith turned and faced it, both egging it on and finding himself deathly, terribly afraid of it. 

“Say it,” he finally said. “Just say what's been on your mind, Shiro.” 

Shiro sucked in a breath, harsh and fast. “I can understand it, Keith. I don't know why I do, but part of me does. But...but _damn_ it, Keith. I thought I knew you better than that.” 

Shiro turned, gripping the side of the table between them. Keith fought the urge to shrink and run; Shiro had never looked so big before. His jaw was set and hardened, and his eyes looked more like steeled mirrors than puffy, soft rain clouds on a spring afternoon. 

“It's not that...It's not that I don't know you. I do. And I know you'd latch onto the first thing to offer any familiar comfort, once it showed itself. I shouldn't have been so reckless in our last fight together. I should have known. I do. God, Keith, I do, but...” 

He stilled, both hands on the table. Shiro bowed his head, one knee bent as he leaned his weight onto a hip. Shiro was more rugged these days. Shiro was _tired._

“But _damn_ it, Keith! That wasn't me, and you should have known!” 

Keith felt the world drop from underneath his feet. His chest swelled and tears immediately came to his eyes. If it had been anyone else raising their voice against him, his fist would have made them eat their teeth. But this was Shiro, and hurt layered his pitched voice like the surface of sandpaper. 

“I can't even go into my own room anymore, without being reminded of him! He's slept in my bed, he _shared_ it with you! He's worn my clothes, and I'm reminded of it every time I catch his scent. Fuck, Keith, I want to set everything on fire. I want to set myself on fire. I don't want to be here anymore, I just...” 

Shiro laughed, a mirthful sound devoid of all amusement. Keith stepped back, folding himself into the perfect mold of a one-sided conversation. 

“He's taken everything, Keith. My life, my lion, my _love._ You know what Coran said, when I was talking about this with him the other day?” 

Shiro snapped his gaze up, a hardened gaze that stabbed into Keith's eyes and forced him into an already quiet submission. 

“He said he knew something was off, since that first day you picked him up. He said there was something different, about the eyes. How they carried little golden sunshine spots around his pupils. He tried to point it out to you, Keith. When he was in the cryopod. He knew you would be the person to go to, for little details like that.” 

Keith trembled. Keith nodded, acknowledged that day. He trembled to the point he had to sit down, letting Shiro's words bludgeon him like a nailed bat. 

“Why couldn't you see it, Keith?” Shiro asked, the moment sliding against their skin like molten lava. “Why didn't you know? All that time I was out there, lost, fighting to get my way back to you guys, you were always on my mind. I held onto you like you held onto me, out there in the desert, in that _fucking_ shack we made a home out of. I had _amnesia_ Keith, and I still thought about you!” 

Shiro yelled his last few syllables, and they echoed with a punch to Keith's churning gut. He could only nod, listen as the tears dripped down Shiro's cheeks and his voice ripped from the very lining of his throat. 

“He left me with nothing, Keith. He took _everything._ God, Keith, I...I don't want to be with you, anymore. I don't think I can, after that.” 

Shiro hit the side of the table, and Keith jolted. Brisk footsteps carried themselves towards the door, and it opened with a silent _whirr._

The door shut as quietly as it ever had, and Keith's muscles finally let go once the silence blanketed him. He slouched to the floor, puking up his feelings in quiet sobs as he buried his forehead into his hands. 

_I'm so fucking sorry, Shiro._


End file.
